Monday, January 14, 2013

ITV does it again...

So this is how ITV is rebranding itself for the time being:

Now I'm not here to call for a return to the bad old days, though it looks as though people in ITV towers haven't learned from the mistakes made in the "heart logo years" either, when critics rallied against the very worst in corporate identity.

Back in the days of my youth - that recently - ITV celebrated its regional identities by allowing each separate component to use its own on-air branding. This helped send the channel into British culture and the national bloodstream. The early 90s refranchising and subsequent consolidation killed off the regions, inventing what is now "ITV plc". The result for on-air identity has been nothing short of disastrous.

Currently known as "ITV 1", the channels' latest rebrand - its third to the BBC's two - falls short most clearly in its typeface. Is the curly-fries lettering the best they could have done? Will it be used as on-screen graphic, I wonder, smudging the screen? Why the return to 'quirky' insert videos when this has long since fallen out of use?

Each of the ITV channels had been growing their own character in recent years, particularly ITV 4 with its links to football and films in the "Men & Motors" style. This new relaunch - for what else could it be called - seems to revert to the very beginning. A difficult to read typeface which fades in-and-out for no reason, a quirky insert which has no context, a circus theme melody - this is the Splash! of branding.